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The Flu Is Really Dangerous
It's now leaking out that there was more going on than met the eye at the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) Summit in Montebello, Canada in August. The three amigos, Bush, Harper and Calderon, finalized and released the "North American Plan for Avian & Pandemic Influenza."

The "Plan" (that's what they call it, with a capital P) is to use the excuse of a major flu epidemic to shift powers from U.S. legislatures to unelected, unaccountable "North American" bureaucrats.

We might have thought that idea had some merit because the Influenza Partnership called for "transparency in reporting of influenza cases in humans and in animals" and the "sharing of epidemiological data and samples." That's very different from the SPP, where transparency has always been conspicuously avoided like the plague.

This year's SPP summit in Canada morphed the Influenza Partnership into the North American Plan. Now we discover that the Plan is not only about combating a flu epidemic but is far-reaching in seeking control over U.S. citizens and public policy during an epidemic.

The Plan repeatedly features the favorite Bush word "comprehensive"; it calls for a "comprehensive, coordinated North American approach." The Plan would give authority to international bureaucrats "beyond the health sector to include a coordinated approach to critical infrastructure protection," including "border and transportation issues."

The Plan is a wordy 44-page document, much of which sounds innocuous. It is helpful to exchange information about disease and take precautions against letting foreign diseases enter the United States.

However, self-government and sovereignty are at risk when control over these matters is turned over to a newly created North American body headed by the representative of another country. It's an additional problem when the entire Plan is a spin-off of the Security and Prosperity Partnership, an arrangement created in secret solely by White House press releases, without Congressional approval or even oversight.

The 2007 Plan acknowledges that it is based not only on the Influenza Partnership, but also on the guidelines, standards and rules of the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

The Plan sets up a "senior level Coordinating Body to facilitate the effective planning and preparedness within North America for a possible outbreak of avian and/or human pandemic influenza under the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP)." The Plan identifies this SPP Coordinating Body as "decision-makers."

The Plan then (ungrammatically) states: "The chair of the SPP Coordinating Body will rotate between each national authority on a yearly basis." A foreigner will be the "decision-maker" for Americans in two out of every three years.

What powers will this foreign-headed Coordinating Body exercise? The Plan suggests that these include "the use of antivirals and vaccines; . . . social distancing measures, including school closures and the prohibition of community gatherings; . . . isolation and quarantine."

Will this foreign-headed Coordinating Body respect the First Amendment "right of the people peaceably to assemble"? Or will the rules of the Plan, SPP, WHO, OIE, WTO, and NAFTA take precedence?

In evaluating the Plan, it is instructive to recall the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act (EHPA), an anti-epidemic plan launched by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on October 23, 2001. Designed to be passed by all state legislatures, the model bill was primarily written by Lawrence O. Gostin, a former member of Hillary Clinton's discredited Task Force on Health Care Reform, and was promoted by the Bush Administration during its first year.

The proposed EHPA would have given each governor sole discretion to declare a public health emergency and grant himself extraordinary powers. He would have been able to restrict or prohibit firearms, seize private property and destroy it in many circumstances, and impose price controls and rationing.

Governors would have been given the power to order people out of their homes and into dangerous quarantines. Children could have been taken from their parents and put into public quarantines.

Governors could even have demanded that physicians administer certain drugs despite individuals' religious or other objections. EHPA was based on the undemocratic concept that decision-making by authoritarian bosses and unelected bureaucrats is the way to go in time of crisis.

EHPA roused a nationwide storm of protest because it was an unprecedented assault on the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens, as well as on our principles of limited government, and so it never passed anywhere in its original text. Will similar totalitarian notions now bypass legislatures and be forced upon us by SPP press releases?

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Bush Refuses to Deny the NAU
The three-nation summit at Montebello, Quebec, was held behind closed doors, well guarded behind an intimidating fence and plenty of police, but the news conference that followed on August 21 revealed more than the three heads of state had planned. President George W. Bush, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and Mexican President Felipe Calderon all refused to deny that the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) is a stepping stone toward a North American Union.

The $64,000 question was posed by a Fox News reporter, Bret Baier. He asked all three heads of state, "Can you say today that this is not a prelude to a North American Union, similar to a European Union?"

Their response was positively sensational. None of the three denied that SPP is leading to a North American Union (NAU). The White House transcript of the news conference allows us to assume that the elites of the three countries are, indeed, moving toward North American integration.

Bush insulted the questioner and those who want an answer by accusing them of believing in a "conspiracy." Bush twice said he was "amused" by such speculation, but as Queen Victoria famously said, "We are not amused."

Instead of addressing the crux of the question about plans to integrate the three North American countries, Bush resorted to ridicule. He sneered at his critics as "comical," and accused them of engaging in "political scare tactics" and wanting "to frighten our fellow citizens into believing that relations between us are harmful for our respective peoples."

Harper tried to trivialize the Montebello summit. He implied that the SPP meeting was merely about harmonizing different regulations on "jelly beans." Apparently, a Canadian jelly bean manufacturer had demanded standardization of the rules so his company would not have to produce different jelly beans for the United States, which bans a red dye permitted in Canada. Nobody asked: If that's all SPP is about, why such secrecy, and does SPP harmonization mean we must allow food imports using dyes we believe are dangerous?

Harper made everybody laugh when he accused his opponents of speculating that a NAFTA superhighway might go "interplanetary." Harper twice pleaded that SPP was merely a deal he inherited from his predecessor, Paul Martin, the Canadian Prime Minister who participated in the first SPP summit with Bush at Waco in 2005.

Calderon chimed in to brush off what he called "jovial" and "funnier" SPP "myths." Surprise, surprise, he concentrated on demanding that we reduce "barriers between ourselves" and put "more investment" (i.e., U.S. dollars) in Mexico.

Bush also failed to deny, and left hanging, two other parts of the Fox News reporter's well-crafted question: "Are there plans to build some kind of superhighway connecting all three countries?" and what about the "lack of transparency from this partnership?"

Bush couldn't with a straight face deny superhighway plans because Texas has already signed a contract with a Spanish company to build a limited-access, 10-lane toll-road from Mexico to Oklahoma. It obviously will not dead-end at the Oklahoma border.

Nor could Bush deny the offensive lack of transparency, which excludes both Congress and the public from all SPP plans. Congress doesn't like to be ignored: 21 Republicans and one freshman Democrat recently sent a joint letter to Bush voicing "serious and growing concerns" and urging him not to "agree to any further movement in connection with the SPP."

The House further manifested its annoyance at the lack of transparency by overwhelmingly (362 to 63) adopting Rep. Duncan Hunter's (R-CA) amendment to prohibit the use of federal funds to pay for SPP working groups or to create NAFTA superhighways.

Bush pleaded that he believes in "trade," "dialogue," and "working with our neighbors" to "work out common problems." So do we all.

U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Wilkins supported his boss with an interview in an Ottawa newspaper. He ridiculed "conspiracy theories" and used another cheap debating tactic: setting up a straw man that is easy to knock down. Wilkins implied that the purpose of the three-amigo summit in Montebello was to prevent potential threats "like those posed by pandemic flu or improperly labeled foods, for example, from penetrating our borders."

However, the current threats from pandemic flu and improperly labeled foods come from China, not Canada. The biggest North American threat of "penetrating our borders" comes from people, i.e., illegal aliens.

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Economic Integration: Mexican Trucks
On September 6 at 9 p.m., the Bush Administration opened up all U.S. highways and roads to Mexican trucks and drivers. That gave the green light to the first 38 of up to 100 Mexican trucking companies, and nobody knows how many thousands of Mexican trucks will eventually drive on our roads.

Bush thus thumbed his nose at the U.S. House, which voted overwhelmingly and bipartisanly (411 to 3) on May 15 for Rep. Duncan Hunter's (R-CA) amendment to exclude Mexican trucks, and again on July 24 (by voice vote) for Rep. Nancy Boyda's (D-KS) amendment, to prohibit the entry of Mexican trucks. The U.S. Senate voted 75-23 on September 11 for Sen. Byron Dorgan's (D-ND) amendment to exclude Mexican trucks.

For 25 years, Mexican trucks had been restricted to a commercial zone of about 25 miles in the United States, where their loads were transferred to U.S. trucks. Bill Clinton, bless him, kept this restriction in place.

U.S. law (since 1971) requires that commercial drivers be able to "read and speak the English language sufficiently to converse with the general public, to understand highway traffic signs and signals in the English language, to respond to official inquiries, and to make entries on reports and records."

It is not believable that the Bush Administration will test the language skills of the thousands of Mexican drivers crossing our border. Mexican drivers unfamiliar with our roads and signage, plus language incompatibility, will be a danger to all driving Americans.

We have no way of knowing if Mexican drivers are criminals or terrorists or drug peddlers or accident-prone since Mexico doesn't have nationwide criminal or driving-record databases. The professional Mexican drug smuggler who testified against U.S. Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean was a legally licensed Mexican commercial truck driver. U.S. drivers are limited to ten consecutive hours of service, but Mexican drivers typically drive up to 20 hours a day. Even if Mexican drivers are now limited to 10 hours per day, nobody knows how many hours they are behind the wheel before reaching the border.

Big corporations are eager to have their made-in-Mexico-or-China-by-cheap-labor products delivered in the United States by Mexican drivers because they are paid 33% to 40% less than U.S. truckers.

Only one or two percent of trucks coming across the border are inspected. The smugglers of illegal drugs, products and people can just consider it a cost of doing business that so few illegal loads will be caught.

The problem is not only the increased wear and tear on our highways that U.S. taxpayers will subsidize, and not only the crowding of our roads that will make driving less pleasant, but it's our worry about safety. Anyone who does much driving on our highways knows how crowded with big trucks our highways already are.

Where Is the Fence?
On October 26, 2006, shortly before the national election, President Bush called in reporters for a very special photo-op. He posed for the television cameras as he signed the Secure Fence Act, which ordered the government to build an 854-mile fence along our southern border. This was and is a very popular law. It passed the U.S. House by an overwhelming (283-138) vote, and passed the Senate by a remarkable 80-19 vote.

After a year, the Bush Administration has built only about 18 miles of the required double fence.

This failure  or refusal  to obey the law leads the American people to believe that Bush and Michael Chertoff do not intend to build the fence, and is a prime example of why the American people don't trust our government. The government could hire eight construction firms to simultaneously build 100 miles of the fence and offer a bonus for the company that first completes its hundred miles.

The only rational explanation of Bush's stubborn determination to override the wishes of the American people by opening up all our roads to Mexican trucks is that this is an essential part of his plan for the economic integration of the United States with Mexico and Canada. The only rational explanation of Bush's refusal to build the fence is that he has no intention of stopping the flow of illegal aliens across our southern border.

Sink the Law of the Sea Again
With all the critical problems facing America today, it's hard to see why President Bush is wasting whatever is left of his presidential clout to partner with Democratic presidential candidate Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) to try to get the Senate to ratify the United Nations Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST).

LOST is the globalists' dream bill. It would put the United States in a de facto world government that rules all the world's oceans under the pretense that they belong to "the common heritage of mankind." That's global-speak for allowing the United Nations and its affiliated organizations to carry out a massive, unprecedented redistribution of wealth from the United States to other countries.

LOST has already been ratified by 155 countries. Most of them no doubt expect corrupt UN bureaucrats to divvy up the riches at the bottom of the sea, which will be brought to the surface by American investment and technology, and parcel them out to Third World dictators to support themselves in the lavish style to which they would like to become accustomed.

Why must we who believe in American sovereignty have to keep fighting the same battles over and over again? President Ronald Reagan rejected LOST back in 1982, not because of picky details in the text, but because LOST would put the United States in the clutches of a supranational ruling clique.

The argument is being made that Reagan's objections were "fixed" in 1994. That's a sham because no one country can legally change the terms of a treaty that has already been signed and ratified by over a hundred countries, and 25 countries have not agreed to the 1994 changes anyway. Furthermore, changing a few details of the treaty does nothing to address the massive loss of U.S. sovereignty which Reagan and grassroots Americans found impudent and obnoxious.

LOST has already created the International Seabed Authority (ISA) and given it total jurisdiction over all the oceans and everything in them, including "solid, liquid or gaseous mineral resources." LOST even gives the ISA something the UN bureaucrats have lusted after for years: the authority to impose international taxes (disguised by euphemisms such as fees and royalties).

LOST would subject our governmental, military and business operations to mandatory dispute resolution by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in Hamburg, Germany. If you think activist judges in the United States are out of control, wait till you try your case before this UN tribunal, whose decisions cannot be appealed.

Since several U.S. Supreme Court justices are on record as using, and urging others to use, foreign law in deciding U.S. cases, LOST would be an open invitation to our activist judges to interpret LOST's purposely vague provisions. Liberal U.S. judges might even develop the theory that LOST is "evolving" (like liberal notions about the U.S. Constitution), so that liberal social and especially environmental biases could be written into our laws.

All LOST agencies are United Nations organizations, and the UN Secretary General plays an important role in administering the treaty. With the UN's shocking track record of corruption, it makes no sense to give it a new infusion of power and money.

The Bush Administration argues that we need LOST to protect our interests in the world's oceans and to assure that our Navy can go where it needs to go. The problem with that argument is that if we join LOST, we will be bound to abide by its decisions.

One of the silliest arguments is that we need LOST to protect us against Russia's claim to the North Pole and its oil riches. If we ratify LOST, we would have to accept the LOST Tribunal's decision. Even though the United States already has valid claims to the North Pole region under the Doctrine of Discovery, the chances of the LOST bureaucrats ruling for us against Russia are about 1 in 155.

The best protection for U.S. interests in the world's oceans is the U.S. Navy, which should not and must not be subject to orders or regulations made by paper pushers in the ISA or rulings of the International Tribunal. U.S. access to the high seas, as well as freedom of the seas for all countries, is best protected by a great U.S. Navy, not a UN bureaucracy financed by a global tax.

We Must Defend American Sovereignty
The attempt to force economic integration of the three North American countries and to make the United States subject to international organizations is moving so rapidly that it has become a clear and present threat to the continued sovereignty and even independence of our beloved country.

The globalists run away from the term North American Union, but they are very frank in calling their goal "economic integration" and "labor mobility" among the three North American countries. That means open borders for cheap labor. The model for economic integration is the European Union, which started out as just a common market and eventually eliminated national sovereignty with a supra-national government making all policies in Brussels and deciding all disputes in Luxembourg.

This North American economic integration is progressing rapidly  Bush giving Mexican trucks access to all our highways and roads (even though both Houses of Congress voted overwhelming against this), the NAFTA Superhighway (for which the Texas portion has already been contracted with a Spanish company), Bush's Totalization plan to put illegal aliens in Social Security, the changes in our law about Patents to benefit foreign countries, the continued demand for amnesty, guest workers, and H-1B visas, the trade agreements that pretend to promote free trade but actually are a cover for outsourcing of good American jobs, and, of course, public school curricula that teach our youngsters they should be citizens of the world.

The globalists run away from the term world government, but they are very frank in calling their goal global governance - and that means decisions made by foreign bureaucrats and judges in organizations where the United States has one out of 150 votes. Global governance is progressing rapidly by means of United Nations and "free trade" treaties and agreements. All UN treaties mean a loss of our sovereignty, especially the UN Law of the Sea Treaty, the UN Treaty on the Rights of the Child, and the UN Treaty on Women (known as CEDAW).

The model for replacing national sovereignty with rule by treaties is the European Union. The European Union constitution was rejected by the voters in two countries, so the elite are forcing it on the people by treaties.

The defense of our sovereignty and independence demands action by Americans now  before it's too late.